I just gotta do it.

Like I have said before, if you have the time and energy to study Pookie, I mean really study him and why he does things, you will see the patterns and logic. For instance he has 4 really naughty things he is doing right now.
1. Tearing paper
2. Spilling drinks
3. drawing on the walls at home
4. Drawing on his desk at school.

And, yes, numbers 3 and 4 are distinctly different. I guarantee you that he will not write on the walls at school or the furniture at home. He has his pattern and will not deviate.

So, why does he do these things? Is he a really naughty boy? Is he uncontrollable? No. He does these things for 1 solitary reason:

1. to communicate his frustration with other things in his life. (i.e. he wants to play, we say its time for dinner, he runs past us, grabs a crayon and marks the wall.)

But then the more he does these things, the more he must do them again, because of another distinct reason:

2. These things are part of a script and he must complete them. (i.e. Geetle and he fight over a toy Pookie is angry When you are angry, you must do something naughty, so he spills Mom’s water glass as he walks by.)

How do you break this? Darned if I know. Burt we have had success with breaking the scripts. If he spills his milk, the next part of the script (in his mind) is for us to make him clean it up while he yells. So, we do not clean it up. We leave it there until he has left for school or upstairs for bed. That bothers the heck out of him and we can see that he does not like it. Breaking those scripts is more powerful than any punishment. But, as you might expect, the breaking of the script can become a new script, so we are constantly on our toes.

One interesting development is the recent pantomiming of naughty behavior. We see him pretend to rip paper, pretend to spill his milk. etc. I think this means that he knows the behavior is wrong, but truly cannot stop it. But he needs to learn. So, when we see this, we say “thats right, you can’t rip that paper.” Like any kid he needs to learn to control his impulses and change his behavior to fit the rules. he may not like it, but it has to b e done.

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